Flannel Lounge Suit

 This wasn't quite what I was expecting to make when I started my latest project - but you know what - I'll take it!  In fact I really like it!

This all started when I decided I wanted to try out one of Cashmerette's pants patterns.  I know they do an apple and pear pelvis fit and wanted to see for myself just what the differences were.  That gave me two choices - I could buy the Calders or the Ames Jeans.  I decided that in this day and age the elastic waisted relaxed fitted Calder's were probably going to get more wear than the more structured jeans so bit the bullet and bought the PDF version of the Calders.

The first thing I did was to import the two different patterns - the apple and the pear - into Inkscape so I could see where the differences were.  Basically, it turns out that it is just the back pattern piece that differs.  The pear pattern piece has the addition of the dart at the back, it has a longer back rise and and longer crotch extension.

So lets talk fruits.  When I hear apple and pear shape I think Apple - round body with thin legs and arms sticking out andPear - smaller upper body and larger hips/backside.  Then I take a look at myself in the mirror and go - yep I'm an apple I have a protruding belly, a protruding backside and protruding boobs - Basically a round ball in the middle with arms and legs sticking out.  So when I saw the pattern differences I was a bit confused - All the changes for the pear pattern are those that I regularly have to do to get my pants to fit.  I decided to go for it and cut out the pear pattern (I figured it was easier to get rid of extra fabric later than to try and add it back in).

Now to figure out which size.

The waist measurement is always the hardest for me to figure out.  It says to measure where you are narrowest.  For me that is directly underneath the bust - and for once the picture shows that point being used.  OK well then we will go with that. At the point shown on the figure above I'm 36".  That's size 16.  Now for hips.  I'm 43" standing and 46.5" sitting.  Size 12 pear? size 16 apple?  

I decided to just start with a straight size 16 and go from there.

I printed out my pattern with size 12, 14 and 16 printed ( I love the inclusion of layers on a PDF pattern) so that I could do modifications as required.  I used my daughters lightbox to tape all the pieces together without trimming - makes it so much faster.  The one thing that I was a bit disappointed about with this pattern was the large margins around each page. Each page has a 1" margin around it which results in 2" overlaps, which is an awful lot of wasted paper. 

I printed out both the apple and pear back pieces just so I could see in real life the differences (plus I was stupid and didn't read my instructions before printing and printed my main pattern without the grid shown so I wanted to make sure that that 2" overlap was really there).  Then I went and compared them to my last shorts pattern.  The front piece was actually a very close match.  The only real difference was an extra 3.5" rise in the Calders.  The back pattern piece was huge compared to my pattern  a good 6" wider around the back leg and 4.5" wider across the bum.  But my pattern was definitely closer in shape to the Pear than the Apple.

Now I had to find some fabric to use.  Normally when I make a pair of pants I can get them cut out of 2 yards of fabric - so when I buy bottom weight fabric I usually only buy 2 yard cuts.  So the only thing I had in stash that was big enough was denim and I did not want to use that for these pants.....but then I saw this blue and black checked flannel - I'd bought 4 yards of this so I would definitely have enough.  OK so they probably wouldn't be outside pants, but I could do with some more pajama pants - and that would work nicely for a wearable muslin.

I cut the pattern out at a straight size 16 pear and basted it all together.  Wow there was a lot of fabric there.  I loved the way they looked from the front, but the back view was not good.  Plus as expected the rise was just really too high - They were sitting right up under my boobs.  I know that the pattern is designed to be high waisted but it was too high for me.   I pinned out 1.5" and that was better, but I think that for next time I'll take out a full 2"  (which happens to correspond to the 2" I took out of the length of the Cashmerette Harrison shirt I made).  

I then tried taking a good inch out of the width of the back panels - basically cutting the pattern back to a size 12 at the back side and that was better.  I then removed the dart from the back - this was less about fitting than about the look - the dart was just really badly aligned with the checks and it make the back look messy so I removed the darts and took some extra off the side seams to account for it. 

The final modification I made was to take a horizontal dart across the back to pull the checks up to a horizontal line across my backside......so basically what I did was take it back to a size 14  (average of 16 front and 12 back) with an apple back.  OK well now I know for next time!  Though I think they are still a bit too big so next time I think I'll go for a 14 front and grade from 14 at the waist to 12 down the hips and legs with the apple backside.

I trimmed off all my extra fabric, took my basted together pants apart and  then put them together properly following both the instruction booklet and the sew along from the website.  I found later that I had made one mistake when sewing the front crotch seam so the center check didn't quite align with the waistband, but I'd flat felled those front seams for extra strength and wasn't about to try and fix it now.  Otherwise I'd done a pretty good job of matching the checks I was quite happy with the result.

For the final hem I turned the bottom of the legs up a full check width, and then turned it up again,  and then a third time to get the right length - so next time I can probably cut a good 3-4" off the bottom.

So now I had a really cool pair of pants but nothing to wear with them.  You really need either something tucked in or something cropped to show off the top of the pants which is the best part - otherwise they just look baggy and a bit daggy.  

I still had some of my fabric left over so I decided to go ahead and make a top to go with it.  I used the pattern that I created this summer for the gathered neckline top, but wanted to remove the gathering as I wasn't sure how that would go in the flannel fabric.  I simply angled the front neckline out to meet the collar of the shirt.  I think I left about 1/4" too much length in that front slit which makes the front neck buckle just slightly but I'm not going to worry about it now!

I extended the sleeves to full length making then straight for a more flared look to go with the flare of the pants, cut if off straight across at waist height and removed the flare from the under bust area down so that it sits snuggly around the waist.

I love the way both of these pieces turned out and have been wearing them since I got them finished. Its a great outfit for just relaxing around the house - gee do I do much of that at the moment???